Extreme Poverty has Different Faces
It happened at the Inclusify Workshop 2022.
The event hall was reasonably packed. The three days workshop focused on “fostering a culture of respect and trust between colleagues, fostering equality, diversity, and inclusion in the workplace”.
As such the attendees were a diverse group of stakeholders.
A most curious thing happened at the end of the event, the man who sat at the back of the hall reading a book brought out his bowls from his black back bag and emptied the leftover cake and pizza into his large bowls.
It was indeed an extraordinary thing to behold.
When the organizers asked him what he was doing, he said he had patiently waited for everybody to eat and he was making sure there was no wastage.
He argued that he was the poorest in the group and he was packing the leftovers because he was tired of the food basket from the Edmonton Food Bank. He also admittedly said he needed some ‘sugar’ in his diet.
His logic made sense and he was eventually allowed to help the organisers get rid of the leftovers.
One of the things that caused me great discomfort was that this guy appeared literate – he had spent the day immersed in a book – he wore glasses. Yet, he took all the leftovers.
Are these indicators to suggest he was not living in poverty? How can we tell that someone is extremely poor? What are the yardsticks? Is poverty relative? How does extreme poverty present itself in 2022?
“The definition of poverty differs from country to country, but in high-income countries, the poverty line is around $30 per day.”
The City of Edmonton agrees that Edmonton’s prosperity has not reached everyone. More than 1000,000 Edmontonians live in poverty – 30,000 of them are children.
End Poverty Edmonton and the city of Edmonton work complimentarily to eradicate poverty. They have several strands which include eliminating racism, accessible and affordable transit, access to mental health services, affordable and quality child care, affordable housing and livable income.
Can you live in Edmonton and still be extremely poor?
Extreme poverty is defined by the UN as living on less than $1.90 a day.
But our man here was in poverty, he said he was living in extreme poverty and that everyone else in the group was richer than him!
Perhaps, I was just distressed that poverty has many faces and colors.
If a BIPOC woman was cleaning out the leftovers into her bag, you would sympathize with her and observe that times are indeed hard. You would ask her to call 311, 211 and offer her a list of charities where she can get food.
This was a Caucasian man in his thirties. I have tried to research supports for single men in Edmonton and I am coming short. If you know any more than I do, I would like to understand what the supports are for men who live in extreme poverty.
Perhaps, that would not have bothered you. Do you think of this as naive? Let me know what you think.
I agree, perhaps, I need to go out more and interact just a bit more. All of us could do more interacting and engaging with the world in general terms.
Anyhow, that was my introduction back into the foray of writing authentically and honestly. I have done this before, a couple of years ago now, I wrote a weekly column titled Reflections for Nigerian magazine called TELL.
I also wrote a blog called Naked but I was not faithful to that:(
Its me against myself on Re-Imagine.
I will be releasing a new post on Re-imagine every Monday.
Can we both imagine though a world were poverty doesn’t exist for women and single men? Can we re-imagine a world where 1.5 million + women are not living in poverty in Canada?
At this moment, all I ask is for you to give me a piece of your heart weekly as we try to reconfigure things. Perhaps, we can re-imagine what Edmonton can really look like.
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Tee Adeyemo is a writer and publisher of the quarterly Ladies Corner Magazine. Her podcast is called Conversations with Tee. A couple of years ago now, she wrote a weekly column titled Reflections for Nigerian magazine called TELL.
